Sean E. Bailey

Senior Scientific Technician. Sean Bailey kicked off his working career by spending three years working for a private ambulance service as a paramedic. With commercial diving and skippering qualifications, the lures of the ocean saw him spending a year skippering and leading dives for one of the dive charter companies in Sodwana Bay while studying part-time at UNISA.

Sean turned down an offshore diving job offer on Australia’s Gold Coast for a position as a field officer with the Oceanographic Research Institute in Durban, where he spent a little over a decade. During this time Sean was involved in many research programmes and initiatives across a very wide research spectrum.  He ran the long-term mussel monitoring and commercial oyster harvesting projects, designed and constructed various pieces of specialised equipment and apparatus that were not available on the commercial market and maintained ORI’s research equipment, dive gear and boats. He also inaugurated the ORI dive school and trained a number of class IV divers over this time. Sean joined SAEON in 2007, where he is a senior scientific technician. He is responsible for all diving and boating activities and has been acutely involved in the design, deployment and maintenance of SAEON’s array of Continuous Monitoring Platforms (CMP’s).